SEC Championship Game: Florida 31, Alabama 20

The perfect season is over. The Bowl Championship Series national title game hopes are over. And for the first time, Alabama players walked off the field with tears running down their faces.

Florida 31, Alabama 20 in the SEC Championship game.

Yet the word I heard most in the locker room was this one: "Proud."

"Coach (Nick) Saban said he was proud of us," nose tackle Terrence Cody said. "For a team like us to go undefeated in the SEC, it wasn't us for us. And for us to dominate teams like we did all week, he was proud of us."

Alabama led 20-17 after the third quarter, then watched as the Gators hold the ball for 12 minutes and score twice. Brutal. That led to a locker room that Glen Coffee described as, "Bittersweet."

By the way, we spoke with several of the freshmen in the locker room for the first time all season. You'll read a lot about that soon. I asked Julio Jones what the future of the program is looking like: